Barry County, Missouri - Jaques Family "Dad in a Wreck!" "Dad in a Wreck!" The Incredible JAQUES Family Barry County, Missouri Submitted by Sylvia Stevens Also see: jaques1.htm>The Bill and Sarah (Ellis) Jaques Family in our photo album Some in the Ozarks call it "The Knowin' Way". Whatever it is, they had it. Nathan JAQUES, my great grandfather once worked in a hotel, I think in Arkansas. While sleeping, he was wakened to see a woman walk through the closed door of his room. She was dressed in white and touched his cheek gently. He was paralysed and couldn't speak. She turned and floated out over the transom and there was a loud banging on the door. He leapt up to answer it and it was a boy with a telegram saying his sister had been killed! We don't know which sister, Molly, Alice or Odie JAQUESS it was, but we believe it might have been Rebecca Jane, an aunt never mentioned during my grandmother's lifetime. Grandmother was Elsie Belwood JAQUES. The family spelled the name differently every generation, it seems. Years later, around 1920's when Nathan was working on the Frisco Railroad, his son, Millard Nathaniel Jr. was playing on the floor beside his mother and siblings, Elsie, Marvin, Mildred, and Harold (Ray and Beulah were not born or were infants, yet) when suddenly he rose bolt upright and said clearly "Dad in a wreck!" "Oh, don't be ridiculous!" Lenora JAQUES told him, "You're making that up!" "Dad in a wreck!" Junior insisted, speaking clearly, despite his speech impediment. He was mentally retarded and seldom spoke. Nobody thought anything else of it until the next morning when two men from the Frisco brought Nathan home on a stretcher. He had been involved in a train derailment and had been thrown off the top of a boxcar. He had a broken foot and leg. The wreck had happened at the time Junior had spoken of it. My aunt Mildred says it's the only time she ever saw Lenora faint. When Ray Leon JAQUES was killed in WW-II on the Lexington in the Coral Sea, Lenora dreamed about it at the time it happened. That was in 1943 or so. About eight years ago, my nephew Ramie had a vivid nightmare in which he was trapped on a flaming, sinking ship. He described the radio room (where Ray worked) and called his grandmother, Mildred (Ray's sister) "Sis" and insisted he was Ray Leon (he was maybe four years old when he dreamed this!) My grandmother woke me up by turning on the television one night. As the old set warmed up (blank picture) she told me "I dreamed something happened to Bobby... I want to see how the speech went.". As the sound came up and the picture formed, we heard the announcer say "Senator Kennedy has been shot! Tonight at the Ambassador Hilton in Los Angeles..." All we could do was look at each other in wonderment. The JAQUESS JACQUES JAQUES family was an uncanny bunch. They are also VERY hard to find. Living in the Marshall Hill district of Monett MO, they were in the poor section of town. If anyone has any information on them, let me know. I have a bunch more stories of their strange extra sensory perceptions. It may very well take ESP to find them! Return to Online Data Index <../barry.htm>Return to Barry County © 1999 Susan Tortorelli All Rights Reserved